What is Sentiment Analysis

Considering the fast growth and spread of the internet and information technologies, gastronomy had to improve due to the excellent communication facility between customer-business and costumer-costumer, showing the incredible power of eWoM (electronic word-of-mouth). The present research intends to do sentiment analysis on the restaurant's reviews to study how they can stay competitive in the market. The proposed methodology adopts a machine learning approach with social media commentaries classified as positive or negative sentiments and then analysed if they relate to the review ratings. The results reveal that although customers from two countries evaluate a restaurant by a similar rating on TripAdvisor, it doesn´t mean that the associated sentiment has the same value as the rating attributed. Sentiment analysis helps understand the motivations of each gastronomic consumer and realise what leads them to create reviews to express their emotions associated with the service.